The Politician episode 3: All melodrama, no emotion

The third episode of The Politician doubles down on the wacky soap opera plots, muddying the waters of a show that is at its most compelling when it plays it straight.

The plot of Netflix’s The Politician thickens as more information comes to light about the Infinity scandal, and the Payton campaign team works overtime to mitigate the fallout. But there’s someone else who’s been busy, and that’s Andrew, professional high school whistleblower. He’s spent most of the series so far lurking in the background, waiting to drop nuggets of politically explosive information like he’s Deep Throat in a D.C. underground parking garage. He’s been on the “Infinity isn’t really sick” train for a while, but he’s just starting to make some noise about it.

Driven by his love for Infinity, Andrew manipulates her sweet, dumb boyfriend into helping sabotage her political prospects in the belief that she’s being used as a mere prop for Payton’s campaign and will get hurt. What follows is pretty much everyone in the show engaging in some serious cloak and dagger behavior, without moving the needle too much until the episode’s dramatic finale.

Campaign manager James (played by Theo Germaine who, to be honest, is shaping up to be the breakout star of the show, his intensity and emotional chemistry with Payton undeniably compelling) pretends to betray Payton to his scheming, Brett Kavanaugh-ish brothers, who predictably leak the information to his political rival Astrid. What they pass along is a new campaign initiative to support the eradication of a devastating disease in Africa — only it has long since ceased to be a public health concern, and Astrid’s attempt to cut them off at the knees by announcing the same initiative first backfires in her face. At this point, you have to wonder if her head is really in the game.

Astrid is paralyzed by indecision and a fear of failure brought on by her hypercritical father, and even her vice president is begging her to do something, anything. (Skye is delightful, by the way, and if she were to take over the show at this point I wouldn’t be mad about it.) But Astrid, on the other hand, is a major weak point in The Politician. She and Alice are designed to be these unemotional, ambitious “women behind the men” types who attain power through the political success of their significant others. But neither feel like actual people, and heading into episode four, it’s starting to be a problem.

Meanwhile, Infinity’s boyfriend Ricardo is being used as a saboteur to her political campaign. An attempted sex tape leads to his discovery of a tape of Infinity being interviewed on local television, where she says two potentially incriminating things: “I don’t have leukemia,” and she refers to the reporter as a “butt munch”. Surprisingly, it’s the latter perceived homophobic slur her political opponents seek to capitalize on. Payton and co. strategize about how they’re going to spin this, but all that is going to have to be put on the backburner. Ricardo, devastated by Infinity dumping him upon learning of his betrayal, breaks into Astrid’s house, and when her parents (played by Dylan McDermott and January Jones, respectively, because of course they are) come home, all indications are that she has been abducted.

This episode also sees Payton square off against the Harvard admissions committee, who have been dangling an acceptance letter in front of him like a carrot to get him to make a large donation. Payton refuses, insisting that he’ll only go to Harvard if he gets in on his own merit. (Whether that’s an actual principle or if he’s just concerned about the optics of being a rich kid buying his way into an Ivy is unknown, and the fact that he can’t easily distinguish between the two is entirely consistent with his character.)

Despite the fact that the action is undeniably getting ramped up, especially as the episode closes, it’s hard to escape the feeling that we’re getting further and further into the weeds. Whether the show will be able to course-correct or completely commit itself to outlandish, soap opera plots remains to be seen.

The Politician is now streaming on Netflix.